This event is rescheduled and updated from April 13.
Your invited to explore South Mountain in Stories of the Mountain Spring into History Tour on August 24, 9 AM to 4:30 PM. South Mountain holds centuries of history and lore. The mountain forests fed the iron ore industry, sheltered escaping enslaved, saw the strife of Civil War and was reborn through Pennsylvania’s conservation movement. Life on the mountain is the story of small communities across America. Visit a general store museum, a site where John Brown taught Sunday school, learn how Pennsylvania led the conservation movement, and hear eerie stories of the silvery lady of Pond Bank.
The tour departs Franklin County 11/30 Visitors Center at 9 AM and begins with a comparison of two Franklin County iron ore works—Caledonia Ironworks and Mont Alto Ironworks. Learn about the ore process, layout of the ironworks, and the people who worked at the furnace. Stop at Preserving Our Heritage Museum, housed in a one-room schoolhouse, and visit a relocated 1930 – 1950 general store. Travel across the South Mountain and see the landscape that gave fresh air and hope to thousands of tuberculosis patients. Visit the new home of the Mont Alto Historical Society. Step back to 1812 and visit the Royer farmhouse at Renfrew Park. Continue up the mountain to Monterey Pass Battlefield where 10,000 Union and Confederate troops fought along the mountain ridge in a blinding thunderstorm during the late hours of July 4 and early hours of July 5, 1863, part of the retreat from Gettysburg.
Single tickets are $30/ person or two tickets for $50. Bring a friend and save! Sign up here.. Tour fee includes lunch at Founder’s Grille with a pristine view of South Mountain. Parking information provided here.
Step back 300 years and explore the earliest settlements of Franklin with the Franklin County Visitors Bureau Spring Into History Frontier & Colonial Tour on April 6, 9 AM to 4 PM. Participants will meet at the Franklin County 11/30 Visitors Center to begin the tour with a brief overview of early Franklin County and early America. The tour takes in sites of frontier settlement and raids by the native tribes. Living history portrayers at Conococheague Institute and Fort Loudoun. Learn about these early residents of the Cumberland Valley. Glimpse their lifestyle, culture, customs, and challenges.
Single tickets are $50/ person or two tickets for $75. Bring a friend and save! Lunch is included along with several historical items and information pieces. Payments can be mailed to Franklin County Visitors Bureau (FCVB), 15 South Main Street, Chambersburg, PA 17201 or dropped at the Franklin County 11/30 Visitors Center. For those preferring to register online, the event is live on Eventbrite and can be accessed here. (Eventbrite includes a processing fee.)
Experience a new awareness of American history and gain respect for the frontier settlers in the Spring into History Conococheague Settlement Frontier & Colonial Tour.
James Smith, who was born in Mercersburg, another frontier settlement in Franklin County, was captured in 1755, at age eighteen, as he was building the Braddock Road. Smith was taken captive by Caughnawaga Indians and was adopted by the tribe to replace a fallen warrior. While living with the tribe, he learned the ways of Indian warfare. In 1760, James Smith was freed in a prisoner exchange.
At the end of the French and Indian War, the Indian attacks along the frontier lessened. But, within two to three years, the attacks increased due in part to indiscriminate trading. Trading companies didn’t particularly care who paid for their goods, so guns, powder, lead, hatchets and knives ended up with the Indians. These goods were used against the settlers. The British issued permits to the traders without considering the danger such trade brought to the settlers on the frontier.
James Smith gathered a group of men who wanted to protect their land and their families and trained them to fight Indian style – using the cover of trees, bushes, fences—the very opposite of the formal British style of fighting in open lines. The men James Smith gathered were called Black Boys, painting their faces just as the Indians did. The Black Boys began stopping supply wagons and inspecting for weapons.
In March 1765 and May 1765, James Smith and the Black Boys burned contraband supplies—those items that would be used to attack the frontiersmen and their families. The traders sought help from the British at Fort Loudoun. Each incident brought confrontation between James Smith, his Black Boys, and the British soldiers of Fort Loudoun. The British captured the Black Boys; and in turn, the Black Boys captured the British. Prisoners were exchanged, but the British did not return the captured colonist’s guns—nine in all and a major point of contention to the frontiersmen.
On November 16, 1765, tensions peaked, and James Smith and the Black Boys attacked Fort Loudoun. At 7 PM, Fort Loudoun was surrounded by men shooting guns and yelling all night. More men joined the contingent and by 10 PM, one hundred Black Boys closed in on the fort, firing on all corners continuously. The British had little ammunition on hand, so the men were ordered not to fire. During the siege, the British soldiers only fired one return shot.
After two days of attack, a surrender of the frontiersmen’s weapons was arranged, and in return, James Smith and the Black Boys ceased the attack of Fort Loudoun.
In 1764, Franklin County PA was the frontier of colonial America, inhabited by Scots-Irish, German, Irish, and Welsh immigrants and remained the hunting grounds of Native American tribes, in particular the Lenni Lenape, known also as the Delaware. The unrest along the frontier was ever-present as a steady influx of settlers occupied the frontier lands of Franklin County, seeping more and more into the land Great Britain promised would remain Native American territory. A year earlier in western Pennsylvania, Chief Pontiac attacked British forts because of the encroaching settlements, and British Colonel Henry Bouquet responded by attacking the Native Americans, spurring an increase of Indian attacks on European settlers of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. It became all-out warfare. On the morning of July 26, 1764, as Enoch Brown and eleven students settled into their studies, the war came to the doorstep of the small, log school house in present-day Antrim Township, near Greencastle PA.
Three Delaware entered the school , clubbed and scalped schoolmaster Enoch Brown and his eleven pupils. Archie McCullough, one young boy, would survive by pretending to be dead as the horror happened around him. When the Delaware left the schoolhouse, Archie managed to hide himself in the fireplace until he was certain they would not return and then made his way to a nearby stream to wash his head in the cool waters. The quietness of the schoolhouse signaled nearby farmers to investigate, bringing help to Archie and discovery to the victims.
Today, the site of so much anguish is a much more peaceful place. It is now Enoch Brown Memorial Park– 3-acres of greenery, which includes a memorial where the story is told on the four faces of a monument, a series of walking trails, and a pavilion.
The park is located off Williamson Road, which is just off Route 11, at 2730 Enoch Brown Road in Greencastle.
Enjoy history and fun with the “A Greencastle Speakeasy During Prohibition” at Allison-Antrim Museum’s second annual mystery dinner FUNdraiser. The goal is to gather clues from each of the characters and the games, to be the first to solve the mystery. The actors portraying the characters will be scattered throughout the room of guests and will stay in-character for the remainder of the evening. After dinner, there will be time to socialize, allowing guests to gather more information, to solve the mystery. Throughout the evening, Rebecca Elgin will be facilitating the storyline, which is historically based – but not truth
The 18th Amendment prohibited the manufacturing, selling, and transportation of alcohol. It was ratified on January 29, 1919 but went into effect January 16, 1920. In Greencastle, all the hotels had bars and the eateries in town also sold alcohol. When Prohibition went into effect, all the hotel bars were shut down, and in some cases, it caused the demise of the hotels, such as the National Hotel, on the southwest corner of the square, which closed in 1920. Prohibition ended almost 14 years later, on December 5, 1933.
B Street 104 Restaurant & Pub, 104 East Baltimore Street, Greencastle, PA 17225 will be hosting the mystery dinner, in The Gem banquet room, with the meal beginning at 5:30 p.m., on Saturday, April 14, 2017. The menu is: baked ham, broiled, lemon-dill haddock, roasted potatoes, green beans, mixed green salad with choice of two dressings, warm bread and butter, assorted dessert selections, iced tea and lemonade.
Tickets are $45/person and can be purchased at Allison-Antrim Museum or online via PayPal at www.greencastlemuseum.org/mystery.html. PayPal permits use of credit cards for payment. Your PayPal receipt will be your ticket, so you must bring your PayPal receipt with you on Saturday, April 14. Please RSVP by Thursday, April 8, 2018.
For more information, please visit: www.greencastlemuseum.org, Facebook, on Twitter @greencastlemuzm, or call 717-597-9010.
Allison-Antrim Museum, Inc., 365 South Ridge Avenue, Greencastle, PA is open regularly Tuesday to Friday, from noon to 4 p.m. and Saturday, 11 PM to 1 PM.
